Like when learning to ride a bike I built a training rig to observe the movement of the mech/electronics did you test drive the control system or just dive in and fire up your machine with sharp objects :D

Well I for one will use the machine itself as the test bed, start off with one axis at a time, test limits, travel yadda yadda. My setup will be pretty slow as well, a crash will be like two tortises having a head on collision.

Russell.

Instead of building a test rig i just pulled apart a couple of other desktop CNC machines. Mostly just to see what they had been done. Then I looked for pictures of any thing and every thing to do woth CNC construction.